Liv lay curled up in darkness. Natural darkness. She was not in the Empt. No one was.

When she changed the target of the Empt from Hakro Manus to nobody, she hadn't been sure. There were no records of the ability having such a property. Probably because the ones with the King's Eyes had never needed such distractions. And because the Red King had destroyed most of the information about the eyes in his age.

So after creating a distraction with the Empt, all Liv had to do was clasp her hands and bury herself in the side of the mountain. It wasn't clear how much the Shadow could sense, so she did it as efficiently as possible.

Now all that remained was a wait. A long, starving wait as Liv put pressure on her bleeding beck and did her best to keep herself from lashing out. He was out there. Hakro. She could've gotten herself out and gone after him. She was far from her best but so was he. Even if she won, however, the Shadow would come and eat her alive.

The Empt didn't work on it. Nor did hypnosis. Spatial manipulation was a joke, as the thing moved faster than you could see. Even matter didn't matter to it. The Shadow destroyed everything in its path.

But would it come? She had used the Empt abnormally. Maybe it wouldn't come. That meant... she could slaughter that man now. She looked within her mind and Fabian's dead eyes looked back.

Her eyes shot wide in the darkness as a deranged smile formed on her lips. She put a hand on the rock she had formed to trap her and wished for it to give way. She was done hiding.

Then she shot back so fast she hit the back of her head. The sound from outside turned from muffled darkness into violent light. That thing had arrived. Fast. Liv scrambled against the wall with her hands as she stared at the dark rock wall, expecting it to burst. At any time it could. If the Shadow sensed her, it would come, and it would destroy everything that was her.

Pure fear filled her. Different from what she had felt at Hakro. His dark, uncaring eyes and his indifference to murder made her spine tingle, but he was human. She could talk to him, know him, and hate him. The Shadow was different. It didn't care about anything. It just followed its one and only instinct. Murder.

And at that moment, it was closer than ever. Liv had never seen it. She had imagined it. A somewhat humanoid monster born out of the deepest depths that the mind held. A shrouded creature of pure carnage.

She could hear that she had been right. The screams told her. She had passed through areas that the Shadow had wrecked—not her home since she had been afraid it would come back to destroy the little that remained of it—and the remains made her skeptical. The Shadow didn't even seek to destroy material, so how could it do something like that? It was hard to comprehend. But when she heard it—the cries of despair mixed with the temple's indifferent abolition—she believed it all in an instant. Even while buried alive, the sound was deafening.

Liv's lips trembled as she stared straight ahead, thoughtlessly unable to take her eyes off the wall.

On the other side, families were being slaughtered without discrimination. The Shadow hadn't been far, and it was much too fast for normal people to escape, so they would simply die. An act of nature the people of Stratum would have called it. That was what they called it when her village was the target.

This was what she had wanted. For the people to see the truth. The Shadow hadn't a benevolent bit of matter in his construct. It was just a monster. And it had been allowed to exist for too long. So why? Why did she block her ears with trembling hands?

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She caused it, so wasn't it only right for her to listen? To hear as that abomination sent those crying children straight to hell.

She closed her eyes, but her mind barraged her with images. And while the terrible sound got less with her hands pushing her ears into her skull, sounds deeply ingrained in her psyche played back. There was no escape.

She curled up once again and lay amid the pure chilling black.

Then there was her father's face. How his eyes turned fearful when her hand turned to a fist. It was like he actually feared for her life. How could he? She was his daughter. His only child. And while her mother smiled when she looked, it was like she could read her conflicting emotions. She could just sense it. Those times when she hoped they would have lopped her daughter's head off as a baby so that she could've just had another and lived happily ever after.

Liv kicked her feet and shook her head, but the thoughts never left. The images persisted even as she opened her mouth to scream. Threatening herself didn't work. She knew she wouldn't expose herself, so she was her own mind's helpless victim. And inflicting pain was all she ever did.

She saw herself crying as the older boys threw stones at her, cackling. When their parents came to tell them off, they spared her an apologetic glance, but they all had their hidden emotions as well. When she was hit in the head and was forced to run to her parents, her mother treated her, she told her to be nicer to them or just avoid them. His father didn't help any more. He patted her on the head and told her they didn't mean it or that they didn't know how much it hurt. He told her that the wounds would heal. When she told him there would just be new wounds, he gave her a sad smile.

She was 12 when she learned about the Red King's hypnosis. She vowed it was the last time she would be mistreated. Otherwise, she would make the people kill themselves. She declared so to her father. He slapped her. That was the only time he ever had. She could still feel it on her cheek. But the real mark was on her soul. It was the day she lost the last of her trust someone outside herself.

Liv tried to distract her mind from the memories. Clear her mind, count, rattle on without thought. Nothing worked. The memories were like an outside force she was subjected to.

But then ends her lips curved up as if pulled. She still remembered that dull sound of the rock hitting the biggest boy on the head. He went down in the mud with a splat. The feeling of power didn't last, however.

Her parents found her shivering in the mud as well as a puddle of her own urine. She had been sure they would beat her to death. Instead, she couldn't open her swollen eyes for months.

It was wrong. The state of the so-called innocents. So let those children die. They carried pitchforks. It was only right that they be buried with them. If the Shadow hadn't ripped her village apart, she may as well have done it herself.

Liv closed her mouth, unplugged her ears, sat straight, and with her lips in a straight line, she listened.

The sound persisted for long. The Shadow always prowled the scene. But it did not find Liv. It picked apart buildings and the remaining humans, but it did not sense her.

Then time started to pass. She couldn't leave yet. Her escape was guaranteed yet. Surviving was the priority. For that, she would starve as her wounds dried.

Her lips turned to sandpaper as she started processing how many people had just died. How many she had killed. But anything that might have resembled guilt was replaced by a boring hole of nonchalance in her stomach. Her cheeks caved in as days passed, her body consuming itself. She passed in and out. At times, she couldn't tell if she was asleep or awake.

She found strength in memories. She replayed the emotions and felt her identity deepen with them.

She remembered the sorrow, humiliation, and anger. She became them. Only then was she sure she could do anything.

Along with her determination, she found something else. A depth of thought she hadn't reached before. Where the emotions were felt so deeply, they became your mind.

With that, a revelation.

The Red King was right. There was no sense in a world ruled by the weak. If there was true strength, it was her. If someone would stand on top and control the unfairness of the world, it was her.

When the verge of death came, she stood up. Her legs wobbled but were not weak. They did exactly as she bid of them. She then put a hand on the wall and it gave way.

She noticed something. There was something new in her touch. That is why she refrained from teleportation. Instead, she walked into the blinding light of dawn and set foot on air. And with another step she stood, suspended in the skies. No more did anything earthly touch her.

Below there lay the ruins. Above, the sun.

She closed her eyes with her hands back, taking in the essence of nature like it was hers alone, for she was the first in a millennium to utilize the King's Eyes to their fullest extent.